Sculpting Miniatures

hi just wondering if anyone knows how to get into miniature sculpting. ive
been modeling for a while now and have just got into full thrust (and this
digest) so i was wondering if you guys/gals knew. thnx

Get some oven baked clay and get to modeling.:) That's what I did, Sculpty
works pretty well. Do something that seems simple first. My first miniature
was a Russian soldier with a rifle in a case on his back, the most simple
thing I could think of, and he actually looks pretty good now that he's
painted up.

Jade Tseng

[quoted original message omitted]

> "DINGb@T" wrote:

> hi
ive been
> modeling for a while now and have just got into full thrust (and this

I would reccomend finding out who does miniatures and inquire with them.

I happen to know that Agent's of Gaming (http://www.agentsofgaming.com)
is scaling up production. They might be a hard sell though since one of their
last new hires flaked on them.

Also, the Starfire guys are looking at doing miniatures but that's a few
months off since they are playtesting version 4 of their game.

I was beginning to wonder if the first post was about the technical
side of sculpting, or how/who to contact.

If you will listen to one whose projects are all beginning, never finished,
I'll take a stab.

On the former, Sculpey was mentioned already, and is very popular, FIMO being
a somewhat less accepted if no Sculpey to be found. I am aware of many pros
who use epoxy, though, of course, the slow curing kind, as well as a few that
use wax.

Dental instruments are not uncommonly used for molding and carving; I've
gotten a few for free just by asking my dentist if he had any broken. Many are
two ended, and even the broken end may have use for sculpting.

As for instructions, I know I've seen some articles in older Dragons on
conversions; adding chaotic attributes to a fig is a nice way to work your way
up to full scale modeling.

As for getting into the business, a previous poster is probably correct about
it being difficult to get in, more so to make even spare change. However, I've
heard of some folks sculpting their own figs, placing them in national
painting contests, then getting the attention of companies by a note on the
fig about being scratch built. Anyway, a large con usually has several
companies in the dealer's booth, and occasionally someone will be willing to
look at your work.

For space ships, my own limited dabbling has been with styrene, and given the
neat shapes and textures to be found in the lowly soft
drink lid, not to mention model kits and Evergreen/Plastruct/whatever
packs, one could bash for years.

Now, did any of the above go towards what you were asking?

The_Beast

> However, I've heard of some folks sculpting their

The Perry Twins who did most of the early Citadel figures did exactly this.
They took a scratch built diorama to a GW con in the 80's, and the rest is
history...

my 2d worth

> I happen to know that Agent's of Gaming

I just ordered the EA Poseidon Super Carrier and it is by far the worst molded
mini I've ever
received.   Is this part of the AOG flake problem you were mentioning?

> I happen to know that Agent's of Gaming

What were the problems with it? I've had a few of the larger AoG ships before
that were not exactly well cast, usually poor surface finish and distortion of
some of the very large pieces. Casting a bit of pewter as big as (say) the
main boom of an Octurion is never easy, but when it is so bent (and too thick
to straighten) that the mini can't be assembled it really shouldn't have
passed quality control. I've seen a number of their parts where problems have
been caused by opening the mould too early after spinning (fatal where large
parts are concerned, but often caused by too much demand for production and to
little capacity). Basically, in crude terms you can teach a monkey to run a
casting machine (which is why the industry pays peanuts.... <grin>), but
running it WELL and checking quality at the same time is a bit more
demanding.....

I suspect that the comment in the first post above was more a
sculptor/designer letting them down (either not producing promised work,
or just being crap) rather than production problems, however.

> What were the problems with it? I've had a few of the larger AoG ships

Jon,

One Half of the main Carrier deck of the ship is bent, plus one side of the
piece has missing material. No matter how much I try and straighten the piece,
I'll still have a gap that I will need to fill.

There is also 4 piece section that is used for the spinning hull section of
the ship... One complete edge of 1 of the pieces is missing, looks like they
didn't use enough material in the mold when casting it.

I have built a few of their Omega mini's when first released that had the
alignment problems, and I was expecting that kind of issue, but I never
thought I'd have to complete the shape of some of the parts with resin.

> Stuart Ford wrote:

Contact 'Agent One' at AOG.   Bruce Graw was most helpful in shipping
some missing parts to me.